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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Important choices',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2019/03/18.jpg" alt="A bike path seen beyond the bridge" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed I&apos;d gotten a haircut, and wanted to keep my hair a bit shorter than it has been for a while.
		It was still long enough to be feminine, and the cut itself was a bit feminine, but I couldn&apos;t wear a ponytail any more.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			I do not really understand the question here.
			It says to explain the differences between the perceptron and a feed-forward neural network that is using a back propagation algorithm.
			According to the reading assignment, multi-layer perceptrons (the only perceptrons mentioned anywhere in the reading assignment) <strong>*are*</strong> feed-forward neural networks that uses the back propagation algorithm (Roy, Chaudhuri, Kundu, Naspipuri, &amp; Basu, 2004).
			In fact, the diagrams of the perceptron looks exactly like what we have already seen in feed-forward networks.
			As such, there are no differences to explain as I can tell.
			Back propagation is much faster than the reverse, as many fewer computations are needed (Nielsen, 2018).
		</p>
		<p>
			Multi-layer perceptrons are designed to emulate the way learning in biological neural networks functions.
			One particular application at which they excel is complex pattern recognition.
			They tend to perform well as a nearest neighbour search, but at a much-reduced resource cost (Roy, Chaudhuri, Kundu, Naspipuri, &amp; Basu, 2004).
			The perceptron learns by attempting to reduce the sum of the squared errors when comparing guesses to known answers.
			Because the errors are squared, a large error term far outweighs several smaller error terms, so the perceptron does not forsake one part of its output to get perfect results on the rest of its output.
			Instead, just the opposite occurs.
			Several smaller errors may be added if it results in larger error terms being reduced.
		</p>
		<p>
			The learning rate, η, determines how exhaustive the search for weight values is.
			Higher values lead to faster convergence, but can cause the algorithm to skip a local minimum while searching, leading to divergence.
			We&apos;re not told exactly what η represents, but it sounds like it is a step size.
			The momentum parameter, α, adds part of the last change made again, so the value continues changing in the same direction more than it otherwise might (Roy, Chaudhuri, Kundu, Naspipuri, &amp; Basu, 2004).
			It&apos;s possible to have the machine learn the values itself to use for η and α, a process called metalearning (Jakša &amp; Katrák, n.d.).
		</p>
		<p>
			The Simple Recurrent Network is a feed-forward network using back-propagation as well (McClelland, 2015), so it might also be considered a perceptron.
			I am not clear on this.
		</p>
		<div class="APA_references">
			<h3>References:</h3>
			<p>
				Jakša, R., &amp; Katrák, M. (n.d.). Neural Network Model of the Backpropagation Algorithm. Retrieved from <a href="https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f7de/25eb027083d4e7144c1ef6831baff35d6d06.pdf"><cite>CSS and JavaScript accessibility best practices</cite></a><code>https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f7de/25eb027083d4e7144c1ef6831baff35d6d06.pdf</code>
			</p>
			<p>
				McClelland, J. L. (2015, December 16). 7 The Simple Recurrent Network: A Simple Model that Captures the Structure in Sequences. Retrieved from <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/group/pdplab/pdphandbook/handbookch8.html"><cite>CSS and JavaScript accessibility best practices</cite></a><code>https://web.stanford.edu/group/pdplab/pdphandbook/handbookch8.html</code>
			</p>
			<p>
				Nielsen, M. (2018, October). Neural networks and deep learning. Retrieved from <a href="https://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap2.html"><cite>CSS and JavaScript accessibility best practices</cite></a><code>https://neuralnetworksanddeeplearning.com/chap2.html</code>
			</p>
			<p>
				Roy, K., Chaudhuri, C., Kundu, M., Naspipuri, M., &amp; Basu, D. K. (2004, March 15). Comparison of the Multi Layer Perceptron and the Nearest Neighbor Classifier for Handwritten Numeral Recognition. Retrieved from <a href="https://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/page/jise/2005/200511_09.pdf"><cite>CSS and JavaScript accessibility best practices</cite></a><code>https://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/page/jise/2005/200511_09.pdf</code>
			</p>
		</div>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="scheduling">
	<h2>Scheduling</h2>
	<p>
		My mother sent me a link to a webinar this morning on healthy vegan eating.
		Unfortunately, that webinar is in only three days, and the missionaries were already scheduled to come over.
		I&apos;d have to give them next to no notice if I cancelled on them.
		The webinar registration page has a contact form, so I used it to write to the webinar host.
		No technical requirements were mentioned on the page, and I&apos;ve never seen a webinar that wasn&apos;t powered by Flash, so I asked them about the requirements and even specifically asked about Flash.
		My plan was that if the webinar wasn&apos;t accessible, or if the host never responded, I wouldn&apos;t cancel on the missionaries.
		Most likely, I figured, Flash would be needed, so cancelling would be pointless.
		Of course, the flip side of that was if I was wrong, I&apos;d be giving the missionaries even <strong>*less*</strong> notice, which wouldn&apos;t be very nice.
	</p>
	<p>
		The missionaries showed up at my workplace to order a pizza tonight though.
		And what do you know?
		<strong>*They*</strong> wanted to cancel on <strong>*me*</strong>.
		How bizarre.
		I can&apos;t help but feel that if I believed in a higher being that I&apos;d never had any real proof of, I&apos;d no doubt take this as absolute evidence of it.
		Of course, it&apos;s neither absolute nor evidence.
		It&apos;s bizarre luck.
	</p>
	<p>
		It&apos;ll be hilarious if the webinar people write back and tell me Flash is required.
		That&apos;ll be evidence that either no higher being pulled these strings with me, the higher being that did pull the strings didn&apos;t know what they were doing, or the higher being pulling the strings is trying to mess with me.
		Which of the three will have to remain unknowable, but as there&apos;s no evidence a higher being even exists, I&apos;ve got to fall back to the default, which is disbelief.
	</p>
	<p>
		When I arrived home, I found a note on my door.
		The missionaries had stopped by my place to try to cancel first.
		They have my email address though.
		Why didn&apos;t they email me and save themselves the trouble of walking over?
		I started wondering if they even could send emails from the email account they use, due to the fact that twice now, they I&apos;ve sent them letters an they haven&apos;t written back, and now they were coming in person at my workplace.
		And now, I find this note.
		It wasn&apos;t just that they saw me at work so they thought it&apos;d be easier to ask me in person.
		That was only an afterthought after they&apos;d left me a note.
		I&apos;m going to have to ask them about that tomorrow, if I remember.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="choices">
	<h2>Why can I make these choices?</h2>
	<p>
		First, a bit of background.
		I&apos;ve never seen any evidence of a higher power, so I don&apos;t believe in one.
		Science presents very compelling evidence that we evolved, while religion has nothing to back up the bold claims it makes.
		Of course, religion can be crafted to be compatible with science on some levels.
		For example, you could make the claim that our bodies evolved, while also claiming we have souls that come from elsewhere.
		However, I don&apos;t believe in souls either.
		I&apos;ve seen no evidence of them whatsoever.
		Therefore, I believe us to be animals that evolved to a position in which we infested almost the entire planet.
		All further questioning in this section is based on that premise.
	</p>
	<p>
		Those that can&apos;t reproduce don&apos;t, and their genes die out.
		Those of us that choose not to reproduce don&apos;t, and our genes also die out.
		We humans have been on this planet for multiple millennia.
		As time goes on and situations change, the reasons for being unable to reproduce have changed.
		However, we&apos;ve had plenty of time to lose the genes that tell some of us to choose not to reproduce.
		Everyone by now should have a strong reproductive instinct.
		And yet, some of us don&apos;t.
		For some reason, deliberately not reproducing is a choice some of us are able to make.
		It&apos;s not just me that makes this choice either.
		I&apos;m not even an anomaly.
	</p>
	<p>
		When I first learned about reproduction, which I think was in late elementary school, I <strong>*immediately*</strong> decided never to create more people.
		It&apos;s a choice I&apos;ve stuck by to this day.
		Why could I make that choice?
		Why was the capacity to make that decision not eliminated from human $a[DNA] by now?
		And recently, I took matters into my own hands and got surgery to sterilise myself.
		I&apos;d say I did that despite the fact that it&apos;d lead to my being unable to pass on my genetic code, but that&apos;s not even it.
		I did it <strong>*because*</strong> of the fact that it&apos;d prevent me from passing on my genetic code.
		I am so violently opposed to the idea of creating more people that I couldn&apos;t even <strong>*consider*</strong> pairing with someone of the opposite sex until I had destroyed nearly any chance that I could accidentally (or intentionally) create another human.
		How could I have come to exist in the first place if whatever genes let me do that existed in at least one of my parents?
	</p>
	<p>
		I was thinking about that for quite a while today, and near the end of the day, something occurred to me: my father didn&apos;t want children until he&apos;d had one.
		My mother talked him into it.
		My father has genes that allow him to be in a state in which he doesn&apos;t want children.
		He lacks my level of conviction to that desire for no children, and once he had one, that desire was shattered.
		However, I must have inherited his lack of desire for children instead of my mother&apos;s desire for lots of children.
	</p>
	<p>
		On the other hand, my mother is stubborn to a fault.
		It&apos;s a quality I inherited from her, and while it&apos;s annoying for others, it&apos;s one of the few traits I have that I take great pride in.
		If you want to change my mind, you have to convince me.
		Using actual facts and logic.
		I&apos;m not wishy-washy, and I&apos;ll stand my ground.
		You can even think you&apos;re presenting me with evidence, but if I deem what you&apos;re telling me to be irrelevant, I&apos;ll throw it right out.
		A good example of this was when my mother tried to convince me to stop being vegan because it&apos;s &quot;unhealthy&quot;.
		For the record, medical science disputes that assertion.
		However, it&apos;s not even relevant.
		When I went vegan, I did it <strong>*despite*</strong> the effect I thought it&apos;d have on my health.
		I thought I&apos;d be in misery, but I did it anyway.
		I did it because my life is so insignificant compared to the life of the planet as a whole.
		I don&apos;t get to last very long.
		The planet will.
		So I shouldn&apos;t allow my actions to harm the planet more than they have to.
		Veganism allows me to reduce my harmful impact.
		So when she makes the claim that I&apos;m destroying my body, I don&apos;t even need to look into that claim.
		It&apos;s entirely irrelevant.
	</p>
	<p>
		So I guess what I&apos;ve learned is that the genes needed to not want children can be passed on as long as their host lacks conviction.
		Meanwhile, the genes for stubbornness can obviously reproduce, they just can&apos;t reproduce after being combined with the genes that specifically prevent one from wanting to reproduce.
		I&apos;m the sum of my parts, and if I was missing either of these vital components, I couldn&apos;t be me.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
